


Bodies at Rest

by yeats



Category: The Authority
Genre: Canon Queer Character, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:34:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeats/pseuds/yeats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three character studies of the original Authority team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bodies at Rest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wagontrain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wagontrain/gifts).



1\. _Hawksmoor_

The roof is strewn with gravel and spackled with bird shit. Jack climbs up the sad stone facade of the building, his palms leaving kisses on each story. Inside, forty people are sleeping; another twenty-five are just settling into sleep. One girl is breaking up with her boyfriend on the telephone; her sister is sitting with her, holding her hand. One man is smoking the cigarette that will tip his lungs from healthy to cancerous; he sticks his head out the window to avoid the wrath of his wife, and Jack shoots him a smile, which he pretends he's not seen, for his own sanity. Three different couples (and one tercet) are fucking, sharing air and space and the fragile, tentative miracle of atemporal existence -- bodies outside of time.

He takes a breath, holds it longer than he should. He leans over the lip of the wall, exhales out and watches his breath dissipate. From this high up, the skyline looks like a string of fairy lights, hung along the dark edge of the sea.

He plants his feet, assesses his position. Seventy-one stories above Broadway and the subway besides, thrumming below it all. Jack thinks of animals, the circulatory system that nurtures and sustains the disparate organs of the body. He thinks of this city, his city (they're all his cities), and the millions of lives strung together along the colord-coded cords of the underground trains. He feels what could pass for veins within his own body, what once might have been the housing tracks for blood and blood cells and a modest life.

Jack winks at the lights, and the lights wink back.

2\. _Sparks_

If you ask her, Jenny Sparks will lie and claim she was there the night they perfected the recipe for Southern Comfort.

"Absolutely," she'll nod, knocking back another finger of amber liquor. "Fucking idiot was using orange juice to sweeten it. Disgusting -- it ended up tasting like rancid meat."

Most of the time, she tells her stories to the Carrier. She likes it well enough that way. Everyone to their own devices, however pathetic they may be. The Doctor, pressing his greasy face to the window and staring at the Bleed like it's his girlfriend gone around with another man. Angie, upside-down lotus-posing in the Carrier's innards, suspended from gravity in the ship's womb with that febrile infant universe humming beside her. Jack, off-ship like as not, digging his fists deep into concrete and drawing that power up into himself. Or else watching Angie, pretending like he's got some higher purpose in mind. Apollo and the Midnighter... Jenny's mind slides easily over however they fill the dead hours. (Envy, she decided somewhere in the mid-sixties, is her least attractive trait, especially this kind: rootless and unformed, envy without a goal or victim.)

"Orange rind," she says. "Zest. That's the ticket."

Li-Min listens to her stories. Not always, but enough. Jenny wonders, halfway through her glass, if her successor will look more like Li-Min. Like it as not, with the way things have been progressing. Does that count as incest? she wonders. Does she care?

Jenny skates her gaze across the formidable span of Li-Min's wings. "A bird-woman," the Tibetan monks had said, their wrinkled hands passing over the surface of the egg with reverence. Jenny understands the comparison (the feathers, of course, balanced and delicate and prone to show up in the corners of Jenny's bed, years after their last appearance there), but discards it as facile -- Li-Min, she feels quite sure, is older than all of them combined, far older than the first fossil with stubby wings.

Jenny's never told her that story, has she. Christ, there are so many things she's forgotten to say, so many stories she's tucked away for safe keeping, stoppered up in jars and snapped shut in boxes and never let back out. A hundred years, Jenny thinks, you think it's such a long time, but it's not. If it were any longer, it'd be unbearable.

Li-Min takes the bottle from her, their fingers intertwining. Birds with fingers, Jenny thinks. And lips, because now they're kissing. Li-Min tastes like air and nothing else, not even bourbon and vanilla bean.

Their hands cover the date -- 1874 -- on the label.

3\. _Apollo_

Neither of them need to sleep.

There's a double-sized bunk in their quarters on the Carrier -- Apollo defaulted to military jargon the moment they stepped aboard, losing hard-won words like "bedroom" and "weekend" and "retirement." He misses the vocabulary of peace, misses the way it sweetened the edges of the world; the English language and its kindly redundancies, layering over itself like the leaves of an artichoke.

Midnighter, he knows, never had those words.

The team tumbles through doors into what has all the makings of evening: the Bleed's light softening through the windows of the Carrier, crimson fading into a darker rust. When they touched off Earth it was midday; every enhanced cell on Apollo's skin receiving the sun with joy, energy singing through his veins like the best fuck of his life. He's not sure how long they were gone, but it doesn't matter. The Carrier keeps her own time, her own council. Apollo crouches down, and touches his hand to the deck. She doesn't talk to him, like she does to the Engineer or the Doctor, but he likes to thank her, whenever he can.

Midnighter is already gone, so he doesn't linger long with the others: a quick conversation with Jenny Sparks about their mission (humanitarian aid to a country that's seen more prime ministers than harvest seasons); a smile to the Engineer to match her wave. Apollo can't remember having friends; he can't remember having anyone but Midnighter. _Friend_, he suspects, is one of those words that gets lost up here.

Steam floods their quarters, curling around his legs. Funny, that: of the two of them, Midnighter's always been the clean freak. His nails always neatly filed, always meticulous about scraping viscera off his boots.

Apollo thinks about sliding into the shower beside him, soaping them both up and letting the pounding water swallow any noises they make. The water stops as he's stripping off his costume -- barely enough time to prepare before a hand comes down, trapping the space between his neck and shoulder.

"Sometimes," he says, pulling his leg free of the clinging fabric, "I think you sneak up on me because I can't sneak up on you."

"That's an interesting hypothesis." Midnighter's thumb digs into his trapezius, somewhere between a massage and a martial arts hold. Playful, for him.

"I'm in the process of gathering experimental data." Apollo shoots a grin over his shoulder, finds one in return. When he pushes himself to his feet, his hands bracket Midnighter's bare waist. No towel. Nice.

"Never knew you were a scientist," Midnighter says, catching Apollo in a shallow kiss -- lips alone, giving and warm.

"I've got my moments."

Midnight and Apollo settle into bed (he'll keep that word, keep it as his own even here), bodies moving together with sweet unity of purpose. Nights like these, the good nights, he wonders if they were like this in the before. He's read about memory loss, what mortal humans go through in trauma. The way the mind shuts away what it can't process or accept, sections it off so every day life can go on. Even still, memories always seep through, like light under a door.

Apollo tries, but there's nothing more, for him. It's always been like this, as far back as he can stretch himself. Midnighter, beside him and over him and inside him, his first thought and his last. He locks his legs around Midnighter's hips, kisses the scar pattern on Midnighter's chest -- he can remember these scars, can lattice the newer ones over the original set, can count the years backwards across his skin. Their co-mingled breath, their grasping hands, the shivering hitch of release and that's it. That's all he knows for certain. That's enough.

They fall back together. The bed sighs under their weight and Apollo echoes the sound. Midnighter draws him up against him, chest to his back, and Apollo lets his head fall back. The sheets feel cool, crisp on his overheated skin. Midnighter smudges a kiss across the corner of Apollo's jaw, an unfocused press of his lips.

Neither of them need to sleep, but they stay like that for a long time.


End file.
